Has anyone ever exported FreeCAD models in to Unreal Engine?

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Kunda1
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Has anyone ever exported FreeCAD models in to Unreal Engine?

Post by Kunda1 »

Saw this video of how to export a SweetHome3D model in to Unreal Engine. Was wondering if folks have done this with FC ?
phpBB [video]
Edit: forgot to use the video tags
Last edited by Kunda1 on Tue Oct 09, 2018 6:56 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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freedman
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Re: Has anyone ever exported FreeCAD models in to Unreal Engine?

Post by freedman »

Can't answer your question but wish I had time to do it. Thanks for the link, I rarely look at stuff like that. Wow!

I have always wanted to see what could be done with virtual solid CAD; You have tools on a rack and use them to carve-up a block or maybe a fire-hose plastic extruder. You could have chain saws, jack hammers, flamethrowers to make fillets and chamfers, using all of these to work on a block 1mm square. Maybe a virtual milling machine or EDM to prove concept of a Mold and then watch the Mold run.
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Kunda1
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Re: Has anyone ever exported FreeCAD models in to Unreal Engine?

Post by Kunda1 »

freedman wrote: Tue Oct 09, 2018 6:02 pm Maybe a virtual milling machine or EDM to prove concept of a Mold and then watch the Mold run.
Hah! Maybe the Path folks would be interested in this.. :lol:
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Kunda1
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Re: Has anyone ever exported FreeCAD models in to Unreal Engine?

Post by Kunda1 »

yorik wrote:
@yorik have you tried this?
Maybe you could conduct battle-royales in your architectural projects ? :lol:
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Re: Has anyone ever exported FreeCAD models in to Unreal Engine?

Post by TheMarkster »

Could be a great way to create a virtual tour of some architectural design, and anything the customer doesn't like he can blast it with that big gun.
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Re: Has anyone ever exported FreeCAD models in to Unreal Engine?

Post by nelsonic »

With the incredible photorealism of UE 5.2 see: https://youtu.be/I7zyNDazmGQ
and it being essentially "free" (though not Open Source) it's worth revisiting this.

A high fidelity rendering with ray tracing would be awesome for "world building" in Architecture projects.
Showing a client/prospect a walkthrough using VR
or just rendering to a video would really help share (sell) the vision.

Is anyone working on this in 2023?
If not, how can we sponsor someone
(e.g. a "summer of code" intern or student)
with motivation and time to figure out how to do this? 💭

Love FreeCAD and will continue using it for parametric models
but if we could export our model and then place it in a UE5 "world" it would be epic!
See: "Unreal Engine 5 for Architecture": https://youtu.be/RRlmBZMYZ9o
Skip to https://youtu.be/RRlmBZMYZ9o?t=785 to see importing from Revit using Datasmith.

Given @yorik's awesome work on BIM and IFC: https://github.com/yorikvanhavre/FreeCAD-NativeIFC
it should be possible to export a FreeCAD model as .ifc and import it into UE5 ...
https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US ... datasmith/
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adrianinsaval
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Re: Has anyone ever exported FreeCAD models in to Unreal Engine?

Post by adrianinsaval »

So what's missing from freecad's obj export?
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yorik
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Re: Has anyone ever exported FreeCAD models in to Unreal Engine?

Post by yorik »

Basically we must better define:

- What is/are the best file formats to import 3D assets to UE
- What features of FreeCAD should be supported

All in all it does not seem too hard to achieve...
jeno
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Re: Has anyone ever exported FreeCAD models in to Unreal Engine?

Post by jeno »

yorik wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 12:24 pm Basically we must better define:
- What is/are the best file formats to import 3D assets to UE
- What features of FreeCAD should be supported
All in all it does not seem too hard to achieve...
You might want to read this from the UE docs especially datasmith

cheers
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adrianinsaval
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Re: Has anyone ever exported FreeCAD models in to Unreal Engine?

Post by adrianinsaval »

jeno wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 12:55 pm You might want to read this from the UE docs especially datasmith
it says there UE supports STEP, IGES, IFC and gltf, FreeCAD can export to those formats. In the video from the OP it says UE can import obj files, FreeCAD can export to that format too. Also I can't imagine them not supporting stl (but it's not mentioned there). Can you tell me what is missing for you? Because from what I'm reading it should already be possible.

As for us adding a native UE format to our export options, we would need some specs on their format, if it's not some proprietary binary format it should be possible although I don't immediately see the need if STEP works fine.
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